spoken by the common people of Cuba, in the
streets. Their voices and intonations are thin and eager, very rapid,
too much in the lips, and, withal, giving an impression of the
passionate and the childish combined; and it strikes me that the
tendency here is to enfeeble the language, and take from it the openness
of the vowels and the strength of the harder consonants. This is the
criticism of a few hours' observation, and may not be just; but I have
heard the same from persons who have been longer acquainted with it.
Among the well educated Cubans, the standard of Castilian is said to be
kept high, and there is a good deal of ambition to reach it.

After dinner, walked along the Paseo de Isabel Segunda, to see the
pleasure-driving, which begins at about five o'clock, and lasts until
dark. The most common carriage is the volante, but there are some
carriages in the English style, with servants in livery on the box. I
have taken a fancy for the strange-looking two-horse volante. The
postilion, the long, dangling traces, the superfluousness of a horse to
be ridden by the man that guides the other, and the prodigality of
silver, give the whole a look of style that eclipses, the neat
appropriate English equipage. The ladies ride in full dress,
decolletees, without hats. The servants on the carriages are not all
Negroes. Many of the drivers are white. The drives are along the Paseo
de Isabel, across the Campo del Marte, and then along the Paseo de
Tacon, a beautiful double avenue, lined with trees, which leads two or
three miles, in a straight line, into the country.

At 8 o'clock, drove to the Plaza de Armas, a square in front of the
governor's house, to hear the Retreta, at which a military band plays
for an hour, every evening. There is a clear moon above, and a blue
field of glittering stars; the air is pure and balmy; the band of fifty
or sixty instruments discourses most eloquent music under the shade of
palm trees and mangoes; the walks are filled with promenaders, and the
streets around the square lined with carriages, in which the ladies
recline, and receive the salutations and visits of the gentlemen. Very
few ladies walk in the square, and those probably are strangers. It is
against the etiquette for ladies to walk in public in Havana.

I walk leisurely home, in order to see Havana by night. The evening is
the busiest season for the shops. Much of the business of shopping is
done after gas lighting. Volantes an